June 2026 • 6 min read
Tags: Psychology, Product, UX Design
TL;DR: It used to be common to distinguish between active social media use, which can contribute to connection and well-being, and passive use, which is more often linked to comparison, FoMO and alienation. But in recent years, that distinction has started to feel insufficient. Social media has become such a deep part of our personal and professional lives that even “active” use can be exhausting, ambivalent and emotionally draining.
In my undergraduate degree, I was taught that the effects of social media depend on how we use it.
Active use - commenting, posting, connecting with people - can lead to positive effects.
Passive use - quiet scrolling - is more often associated with negative effects such as alienation, FoMO and comparison to others.
That distinction is important, and it still helps explain part of the picture. There is a difference between talking to people and only watching other people’s lives from the side. There is a difference between using a network to stay in touch, learn or build a community, and entering yet another scrolling session with no clear beginning or end.
But a lot has changed since then.
And most of us, I think, no longer feel that social networks are a meaningful source of mental well-being. Sometimes even the opposite.
I definitely feel that.
I moved from quiet scrolling to partial activity: posting, commenting, thinking about ideas, being more present. And that did not make my relationship with social media simpler. If anything, it made it more ambivalent.
On one hand, there is real value there. There are connections, ideas, opportunities, conversations and exposure to things I would not have reached otherwise.
On the other hand, there is also load. You need to respond, pay attention, be present, think about how something will be perceived, see what others are doing, feel that everything is happening all the time. This is no longer only passive scrolling in the new “town square.” It is participation in a place that pulls us in, but also charges a cost.
So the question is not only whether we use social media actively or passively. The question is what prolonged presence in that space does to our attention, emotion and sense of control.
A 2025 study called Modern Day High: The Neurocognitive Impact of Social Media Usage examined brain activity using EEG during real social media use. The study included 100 people who used social media for 30 minutes while activity in different brain waves was measured.
The findings are very interesting: during social media use, researchers recorded a decrease in alpha waves, which are associated with a calmer state, and an increase in beta and gamma waves, which are linked to attention, arousal and emotional processing. Exposure to especially emotional or cognitively demanding content prolonged the suppression of alpha waves even after use, and the researchers note that this may indicate slower recovery to a calm state after interacting with such content.
In simple terms: during social media use, the body and brain can remain in a state of arousal even after closing the app.
Recent reviews also support the idea that this is not just a personal feeling. A 2025 meta-analysis on social media addiction and anxiety, depression, FoMO, loneliness and self-esteem among students found positive correlations between social media addiction and anxiety, depression, loneliness and FoMO, and a negative correlation with self-esteem.
This does not mean that every use of social media necessarily causes anxiety or depression, and with studies like these it is important to remember that they often show correlations, not simple proof of cause and effect. But even without turning this into a one-dimensional claim, it is hard to ignore the general direction: problematic, prolonged or compulsive social media use is repeatedly linked to indicators of emotional and mental load.
This is where it gets complicated, because social networks are no longer a “product” we consume occasionally. They are an integral part of life.
They are woven into our physical lives, our social lives and our professional lives. They are a place to maintain relationships, build a professional identity, learn, stay updated, find work, promote ideas and feel part of something. They bring many problems, but not only bad things.
And that is exactly what makes dealing with them so hard. If this were simply a bad product with no value, we would just leave. But that is not the case. There is value, reward, relationships, opportunities, and also mechanisms that pull us to stay much longer than we intended.
There are almost no other “products” we consume so broadly, almost without limits, and with so little accountability from the people who built them.
We talk a lot about personal responsibility: turning off notifications, limiting screen time, deleting apps, doing a detox, not checking before sleep. All of these can help, but they also assume that the problem is mostly with the user.
The truth is that there is an entire system that benefits from the fact that it is hard for us to stop.
There are endless mechanisms, fascinating but also harmful, that activate most of us: infinite feeds, variable rewards, notifications, popularity metrics, emotional content, social comparison, the feeling that something is always happening. These mechanisms are not just “there.” They are designed to capture attention, keep us inside and bring us back again.
So the question is not only how I use social media.
The question is also how much of that use is truly a choice.
If we stop to think about it, this becomes an almost philosophical question: how much of this activates us, and how much of it is truly a choice?
We choose to enter, but the feed chooses what to show.
We choose to respond, but the system chooses what reward to give that response.
We choose to post, but we quickly learn what kind of content gets more attention.
We choose to scroll for one more moment, but the product is built so that one more moment always feels small and harmless.
This does not mean we have no responsibility. We do. But personal responsibility cannot be the whole story when we are talking about systems designed around capturing attention at massive scale.
Maybe that is why so many people feel the same ambivalence. We do not necessarily want to leave social media, but we also do not want to feel that it manages our attention, mood and energy.
Maybe the next question should not only be “how much screen time did I have today,” but what happened to me during that time. Did I leave with more connection, knowledge and energy, or with more noise, comparison and fatigue?
Because if something lowers attention, increases anxiety, causes fatigue and drains us emotionally, maybe the problem is not only how much we use it.
Maybe the problem is how little real control we have inside a use pattern that looks, from the outside, like choice.